Head to head
Vapi vs PhoneBurner
Written By Research Team
AI Outbound Calling
Fact Checked
All pricing verified against vendor documentation
Updated
Higher score
Vapi
The cheapest published platform rate and the most developer-flexible — if you can live with the compliance gap.
At $0.05/min Vapi has the lowest published platform rate here, and bringing your own model keys can take model cost to zero. For engineering teams it is the most composable option. But read the compliance row carefully: the self-serve Build tier has no SOC 2, no SSO and no RBAC, HIPAA is a $2,000/mo add-on, zero data retention is another $1,000/mo, and call history is kept only 14 days. Those controls arrive on the annual Scale contract.
PhoneBurner
Not an AI voice agent — a very transparent human power dialer that keeps reps on the phone.
We are ranking PhoneBurner honestly rather than conveniently: it is not an AI calling platform. It is a human-powered power dialer, and it says so. It earns its position on transparency — every seat price is published — and on doing its actual job well. If your problem is rep talk-time rather than replacing reps, this solves it without any AI risk. If you came here for autonomous AI calling, this is not that product.
Side by side
| Criterion | Vapi | PhoneBurner |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 76/100 | 71/100 |
| Rank | #5 | #7 |
| Type | Autonomous AI agent | AI-assisted dialer |
| Pricing model | Published | Published |
| Headline cost | $0.05/min on Build, plus model costs at cost (or $0 with your own keys) | $140–$183 per user/mo billed annually |
| Concurrency | 10 included, +$10/line/mo; custom on Scale | Seat-based human dialing |
| Free trial | No stated trial credits; signup via dashboard | Free trial including free dialing minutes (count not disclosed) |
| Certifications | SOC 2 (Scale tier only), HIPAA ($2,000/mo add-on), PCI (Scale), SSO & RBAC (Scale only) | ARMOR spam & reputation protection (add-on), DNC tooling |
Score by criterion
| Criterion | Max | Vapi | PhoneBurner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing transparency | 20 | 15 | 19 |
| Outbound capability | 20 | 16 | 8 |
| Compliance & security | 20 | 12 | 11 |
| Integrations & extensibility | 15 | 14 | 13 |
| Time to first call | 15 | 11 | 13 |
| Scale & reliability | 10 | 8 | 7 |